Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Thank you for tuning into our holiday episode. Today you are going to hear a great story of Jody. It’s an entrepreneurial success story in small town America. Jody is a farmer’s wife. Her family wanted to reinvigorate the dying downtown of a small Indiana community. So they started a small homey business and they called it The Homestead and it’s just grown from there. They’re in two locations now. They have a blossoming eCommerce business. But the origin story is due to this farmer’s wife being a busy mom—they had 5 girls in 6 years—and she didn’t want to be stuck in the kitchen any time they had friends or family over. So she learned some tricks about how to have frozen meals ready to pull out and heat up and today she’s sharing those with you. As CEO and chief cook of The Homestead, she’s going to talk about some of her tricks. We’re going to talk about one of my favorites, the Indiana state pie, a delicacy called the sugar cream pie, so listen in for that. She’s going to have some inspiring advice for would-be entrepreneurs and letting you know why it’s important to know where your food comes from. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Welcome to More Than a Mile, a local food podcast from Market Wagon focused on connecting you to local food through farmer stories from across America. I'm Nick Carter, your host, a farmer and CEO and co-founder of Market Wagon. We are your online farmers market with a mission to enable food producers to thrive in their local and regional markets. Food is so much more than just nutrients and calories. It's actually the fabric that holds us together. Thanks for joining me for this episode of More Than a Mile, and thank you for buying local food. It's one critical step in making an investment in food for future generations. My guest today is Jody Bahler, the CEO, founder and chief cook at The Homestead. Jody, thanks for joining us.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Hi Nick. How are you?
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
I'm doing great. Good. So we are doing this recording virtually, but we could have gotten together. You are just an hour away from where I'm at in Indianapolis, up in Remington, Indiana. Right? Yep. I know that you've got a background in farming. Do you and your husband still farm?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yes, absolutely. That's Mike. And Mike farms with his two brothers. so it's a hundred year farm here in Indiana and that's where we've lived since we've been married and raised our five girls.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
That is so cool.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I grew up on a dairy farm and married a hog farmer, so I got an ag background myself, .
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So you grew up on a dairy farm where at?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I grew up in Kansas, little town of Lamont, Kansas. Teeny tiny town near Emporia State University, Kansas State University. So that was where I began.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So I grew up on a dairy farm too. Not really heavy in production because we had gotten rid of the milking equipment. So I just bred. What did you raise? What, do you know what breed? Holsteins, of course.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yep.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Yeah. Very cool. So you were no stranger to the farm life when your husband, Mike decided to whisk you off to the farm life in Indiana?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Nope. Absolutely not.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
How'd the two of you meet?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We actually met through our church. We did a lot of traveling and back and forth with our church network across the United States, and we had met through that. And so that was, that was, yeah, that was primarily how we met and got acquainted.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Oh, that's neat. So moved Indiana, how many daughters did you say?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We have five girls.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Five girls. Are they, are any of 'em still in the house or have they moved on?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Our oldest is still home. Um, she's 26, and then we have twin girls that are 25. Then we have, we had two girls after that. So youngest is, is 20, they range anywhere from 20 to 26. And the oldest is the only one single and living at home still. She's an RN and works in Lafayette,
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So she's a nurse. So she took that on after you as well. I'm understanding you're a nurse.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
She did, she did. She followed in my footsteps. .
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Cool. So tell me a little bit about what it's like to raise five girls on a farm in rural Indiana.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Well, it's been a good life. I wouldn't trade it. We love the country life. We love, we loved being able to raise our girls on the farm and to know what hard work means. It's all I've known, it's all my husband Mike and I have ever known. So it was, it's a life that we love and cherish and we're thankful that we were able to raise our girls on the farm. So it's a lot of hard work. It's not a nine to five job, but it's, it's hard work and there's a lot of, of variety and diversity. Um, and so yeah, it was, you know, they weren't necessarily involved with the, the farming operation and neither was I. I was actually working as a nurse at the time that the girls that we were raising our family, um, stayed home with them for a few years, but then I went into school nursing once they started into school, but however, they weren't, um, specifically involved. They, they did some, some things but not a lot. Because my husband actually farms with two other brothers and there was, you know, it's, it's a large operation, so there was not a lot that they really helped with, but they were definitely involved with the day-to-day activities that were going on.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
It's an extended family farm, it sounds like.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yep.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Got a lot of nieces and nephews involved in the operation?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
There's some nephews that are, that are involved now that they're a little bit older. Yes.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Got it. Now, as you, um, you were a, a working mom, your husband is working hard on the farm, your kids are in school, but I understand that kind of a background here behind The Homestead as a business is just this desire to have good family dinners, right?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
It is, and that is something that's always been important to me, raising my girls. I love to cook and bake and the years that I did spend at home, because we had five girls in six years, I was a very busy mom at home for several years before I went back into nursing. But I would spend my days preparing quantity food and freezing them to be pulled out and used for later date when I had an extra busy day when there was harvest and there was meal, you know, late meals and whatnot. It was the way I kept myself organized and it was nice to just know that I had food prepared in the freezer to pull out for those specific things or, you know, if there were guests that dropped by, I was prepared. So I also did some catering for various friends around the area and it was an interest of mine. I just really liked to do that. Those ideas were kind of the first beginning baby steps. Little did we know at the time, but that was really the, the reason that was really the, the way we founded Homestead was kind of that beginning. How can this help other families do the same thing that we did?
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Where did you learn to cook Jody?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I learned to cook from my mother, of course, yeah, my grandmother. Both my grandmothers were very good cooks as well as my mom. We're not gourmet cooks, we're just good, you know, Midwestern down home cooks. But I definitely learned from my mom. I also self taught a lot of things as I was married and moved away from home. And it's interesting because I collect cookbooks, which of course is probably to be expected, but I read a cookbook like a novel, and I just, I just, I enjoy it and I feel like I learn something every day and I, you know, especially my early years of marriage when I was really learning, I would sit down when Mike was out late, I would read these cookbooks and I would meal plan and prep, and I really learned a lot about organization that way. I learned how to kind of mix and match recipes to kind of create my own and so, you know, it just kind of became a real hobby almost.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Now, some of the recipes I'm sure that you had passed down that you learned from mom and grandma were designed to come straight out of the oven onto the table. Was there, was there a lot of learning and adaptation to take a recipe that would go from the kitchen into the freezer, out of the freezer, into the oven to the table?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Not necessarily. There are some that you, that just aren't really adaptable to that, but a lot of recipes, and people would be surprised by this, because there are just a lot of, most things that you can freeze and be successful with. My mom did a lot of that as well. So I guess, you know, she kind of taught me those, the foundation, the basics of doing that and you know, how to be organized in that way. And then, it just grew from there.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So it sounds like the idea was preparedness. You, you wanted to be able, when you had a busy day or you said, when guests show up, right, to just be able to say, Hey, stay for dinner.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Right. Or, you know, we host a lot of company, we have a lot of friends that come in, family come from out of town or whatever. And it was much less stressful to me to be able to prep ahead, know that I had the food prepared in the freezer I would pull out later to thaw. And it, it just created a lot less work for me, um, busyness in the kitchen while I had guests. And so, you know, I could relax and enjoy my time with my company or my family without stressing over, 'man, I gotta make this from, from beginning to end.' You know, it, the hard work was done, the kitchen wasn't a disaster, , and it just really made my life a lot easier.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Well, I think for a lot of people, you know, hospitality is somewhat of a lost art and one of the most stressful parts about having folks over for dinner is, is the dinner part, right? It is, 'oh, I'm not much of a cook, and that's so much work.' But you really had some intentionality to be prepared in advance so that you could be that hostess.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Right. That was my goal. Um, that was your goal and it seemed to work for us.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Now you are sharing that ability with others. So you took this idea of a family meal around the table that's simple without a lot of stress, and you turned it into a product that you could help other people have at their tables. Tell me, when did you start doing that? When did that become the idea?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
So we started thinking about this in 2000, really the fall of 2009. We honestly had never thought about creating a business, so to speak with this in mind. But there was a property that was available in Remington and part of our family had an interest in doing something to help our downtown kind of invigorate the town, do something. We just kind of tossed around some ideas. Is this something we even want to get involved with? Then the idea was born. My sister-in-law who was also involved in some of these decisions really liked the bulk food concept, which you see in a lot of, um, Amish type communities that, you know, you buy everything in bulk and, and then package 'em down. A lot of the candies and the gummies and the chocolates repackaged down into sellable quantities that people are gonna wanna grab and go.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
And so, you know, that was her interest. We kind of paired that together with like, hey, okay, I love to, I love to cook, I love to bake, I love to cater. And I've kind of dabbled in that with friends around the area and we've also got five young daughters growing up. Could this really be something that we could create moving forward as a family business and do something worthwhile for our community? And so that was when the idea was born. In the fall of 2009, we created the business that we named The Homestead. We wanted to have a very homey feel, I guess just so to speak, something that had a little bit of meaning behind it. We launched The Homestead in the spring of 2010.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
And we were happy with what it was. We created the, you know, we wanted a warm, homey, welcoming atmosphere. We, we had, looking back, you know, it's been a journey. We started out with very minimal few options. Looking back at photos, the store looked very sparse. So it's just, you know, it it is what it is, right? That's part of growing a business. And so in, in these last, you know, since 2010 we've just continued to grow and expand. We realized that there was really, I guess it sort of started out with more, we were more in the mindset of kind of a hobby business. Not really, not really, let's go for the gusto, just more of a let's let's have a fun thing to do, you know? And then we quickly realized that there was more need for that, what we were offering.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
And I still remember the very first casserole that I made to sell to customers was the chicken and rice casserole. We still sell it today. It's still a very much a top seller. That was the one that I remembered trying and we'd make just, you know, I made just a few and stuck them out in the freezer and the concept just took off and people were loving the ability to come in and find something that was ready made and ready to pop in the oven. So, um, you know, that's, that was, we've just, we've just kind of taken one step at a time and grown from there. And, you know, now we offer quite a few items.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Was there ever a point in the last, you know, 13 years now since you've had this idea, was there ever a point where you, you said to yourself, maybe this isn't worth it? Uh, maybe, maybe, uh, maybe I was crazy
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Honestly, yes, probably more than once. . But, you know, I also believe that anything worthwhile is hard work. And I also believe that nothing worthwhile comes easy. Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. It's a difficult road. And, you know, just trying to find what works for your business, what works for the demographics in your area, what customers are gonna want, you know, dealing with all of the costing, the inputs, the math, figuring all that out as a young entrepreneur, which is something I didn't go to school for, my husband didn't go to school for. That was very much, it's been very much a learning curve and at times, yes, felt exasperating, you know? Because it is not an an easy road, but when you see the momentum behind it that what is happening and it, you know, it just, it just makes it worth it all. It really does.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Yeah. I think it's one thing to know how to make a delicious meal at home. It's another thing to know exactly to the penny, what that meal costs per serving, and then know what to charge for it at the door. Right?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, also when you're dealing with small home recipes, although I was multiplying and doing freezer food ahead, it's nothing like we do today as far as quantity, you know? So getting all that figured out has been quite a journey for us, quite a process. But it is, looking back, we've come a long way
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
If there's anybody listening right now who has a love for cooking just like you do, loves to organize and wants to be able to share that gift with others, what's one piece of advice you could think of to share with a cook, a chef who's thinking about jumping out and doing just what you did 13 years ago and hasn't quite taken that leap. What's one thing you wish you could tell 2009, Jody?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I think what I would say is if you truly have a heart passion for something and you have your eyes set on a vision and a dream, move forward and don't look back. There's just something about, at least for me, that sense of satisfaction that I am doing what I love, although hard, and not easy. It's still something deep within that I know I'm supposed to do. We've just, you know, we've felt, um, you know, sometimes you wonder, is this the right thing to do? Should we do this or do that? But it, you know, it seems like about the time we always wonder, something falls in place that just gives us that little glimpse of hope that, okay, we're on the right track, we need, you know, let's just keep putting one foot in front of the other and move forward.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Very cool. I think that resonates with a lot of entrepreneurial stories is, I always say, ready, fire, aim. Right? You know, you know where you want to get to. Yes, you may not have all the details worked out, but starting is the hardest part. So yeah, I'm glad you started. Now, somewhere along the way, this must have been going pretty well, because now you're in two locations. So you opened your second location in West Lafayette. Tell me, you know, how did you grow to double the size of your business that way?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We had an offer, somebody actually showed up in our Remington store one day. It was an owner who had some property in West Lafayette and he had a space lease available that was open for a restaurant-type of business. And he approached us, had heard about us, and wondered if this was something that we would want to expand in. And it really is something that we had thought about, you know, growing our business outside of Remington, but just not sure how that would look. We again, we just kind of took that step of faith. Faith plays a big part in this role. It just, it's just, like I said, you kind of step out and you just trust that this is the right decision. We opened that store, totally reset the store and opened that location five years ago and it immediately took off. It's in West Lafayette near Purdue.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Go Boilers.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Go boilers. And it's definitely, you know, it's a different demographics down there. Yes, it's an ag community, but not quite as closely related ag as we are here, right in, you know, right in the country roads of Remington. But you know, you got a lot more working people and Purdue close by and it really caught on.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So you've got more like busy professionals as opposed to other fellow farmers coming by and and picking up dinner from you?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We do, and I would tend to say that here in Remington we have a lot more folks that are probably stay-at-home moms that maybe do their own cooking. That's just what they're used to, where maybe in Lafayette, west Lafayette area, you have probably more working class people that don't take the time to cook at home. Knowing they have something they can stop for has been a big benefit to them. So we actually outgrew that location and then a couple years ago we actually was it just, it was just last summer my, um, yeah, , it was just last July because we just had our one year anniversary in that location. We actually moved to a larger location on Win Hentschel Boulevard in West Lafayette, and we were able to put in a large 16 foot salad bar. So that was an addition to the location that we had there. It was a great move. We're happy there. We love it. It's got great curb appeal and it's done very well in that location.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Very cool. So shifting gears just a little bit, what percentage of your customers do you know, uh, I guess personally or that you could recognize when they walk in, you've got a connection and you know who they are and you've seen 'em before?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
You know, here in Remington, I would say I would say 60 to 70%.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Yeah.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
But we also pull a lot of people off the interstate, people that see our sign that, you know, are drawn in.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
You get some almost tourist traffic in there?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We do. And it's just grown so much that I don't know if that's as high as it used to be, but new faces every day in both locations. Now, I personally don't know as many in West Lafayette just because of, I don't live in the area, but, you know, we definitely have our repeaters every day. We've got new people coming in. What we have found is the best way to advertise is word of mouth. You have a good product, you have good service, that word gets out and people will come.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Now, what's your favorite recipe? If you were to take something from your inventory at the, at the store, if you were to be your own customer, take it home and that's gonna be dinner for you and your husband, what would it be?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
My personal favorite is the chicken broccoli and rice casserole, and that is our number one seller. So apparently other people like it as well. So many favorites of mine because obviously my favorites are the ones that I'm gonna tend to offer to our customers. So I like, I love them all. As far as the pie, the sugar cream pie is probably one of my favorite pies, which is the Indiana state pie. That's
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Is it?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
It is.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
I knew it was an Indiana thing. Yeah. Did you make sugar cream pie when you were living in Kansas? Or did you discover that recipe when you became a Hoosier?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Discovered it as a Hoosier. I had never heard of it in Kansas it's introduced in Kansas now.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Oh. Oh, I bet you better take those home to some family gatherings, right?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Sure, Yep.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
I would bet that more than half of our listeners have never heard of a sugar cream pie. And you are missing out. You're missing out.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
You are, you are. Yep. So I love 'em all. I'm like my father. He says he likes two kinds of pie, hot or cold. And that's kind of the way, that's kind where I'm at, really
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
, two kinds of pie, hot or cold. I love that. . So as far as local food goes, I mean, you're a fixture in your community. You're in Remington and West Lafayette, and for those of you who are listening, you are not familiar with Indiana geography. They're not far apart. You're really plugged into your local community. And you even said you wanted to start this because you wanted to revitalize downtown Remington, so the downtown may have been getting a little, a little sleepy.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yeah.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So, what about on the producer side? We've talked about your customers, but where do your ingredients come from? Do you get anything locally?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We do get some things locally. Most of our ingredients come from a small town, a small family-owned supplier, Stanz Food Service, which is originated out of South Bend. We have several vendors that we purchase from, but that's probably the biggest one that we purchased from. As far as some of our ingredients come from, like our flours and our sugars come from, Dutch Valley out of Pennsylvania, which is a large Amish settlement. And, in that area that there's a large production of those types of things. That's where a lot of our gummies, our chocolates, our bulk stuff comes from. We buy a lot of our flours and sugars out of that area delivered. A lot of our jar goods come from Holmes County, Ohio, which is another large Amish settlement. There's canneries out there that actually can our jar goods like our jams and jellies and salsas and that sort of thing. Our peaches, our pears. Those are canned out in Ohio and shipped to us.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Wow. That's fantastic.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yeah, we don't actually make those things, those things are shipped to us, but we are making, we're making the frozen line here in Remington.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Your canned items in the flour and sugar, you said you don't, you don't make those, but you know the people who do right?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We do, yes. Yeah. Yes, we buy our noodles. We buy our noodles from an Amish family up in Middlebury, Indiana. We've actually watched them make them, and so, you know, there's, we definitely do use some fairly local items.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
It sounds like it. And even if they're not right there from Indiana, local isn't just a matter of where it comes from, although, you know, that sounds like it'd be the key thing, but knowing just a relationship to the source of where it comes from. To say, 'oh, we know this community in Pennsylvania and we know what they do together and we know how they produce the food.' And that's where you've chosen to get your bulk items from. I love that.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Absolutely. Yep.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Is there anything that you guys grow on your farm yourself that gets made into food at The Homestead?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
So we use some of our own ground sausage, some of our own pork because we are pork producers. We definitely use some of our own pork in our store. Not a hundred percent because it depends on, you know, market time and all that when there's hogs ready and available to go in. So it's not a hundred percent, but we definitely use a lot of our own ground pork in our recipes.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
That's awesome. Jody, it's been so great to learn about your business and how your passion and just your leadership and your family has now bled over into blessing tables far and wide, now through Market Wagon delivered all throughout central Indiana. Do you connect with people who maybe you don't even see their face in your store in Remington, but through Market Wagon? Are you connecting online with more and more families?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We are. It's amazing. We've been, we have been affiliated with Market Wagon now for a little over a year, and it's been, you know, we started out, our first pick ticket was 20 items. Now today we've brought as high as a hundred items for delivery. So it's definitely growing and expanding. We see a lot of repeat customers, which we feel like is great because that means they love our products and hey're buying again and again and again. So we've been really happy with our Market Wagon association. It's been a great way to expand our product line into areas that we can't get to personally with our own stores.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
And at the time we're recording this, we are just a couple weeks away from Thanksgiving, and then of course, Christmas right around the corner. The holidays are a time when food really brings people together. It's a glue right, that, community and family bonds are built around. So your recipes are no doubt gonna be on Thanksgiving tables. They're gonna be on Christmas tables, there are gonna be holiday get togethers and in fellowship halls and in kitchens and garages where families get together just like ours has for years and years. The Homestead's gonna be there. Do you have any holiday favorites or even some seasonal recipes that might be just released for a limited release this coming couple of months?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Absolutely, we do. We have some seasonal ones that we, we rotate in and out as seasons come and go. Obviously pumpkin pie is one that we do not offer year round, but it's one that we offer October, November, December. Actually I think we even start in September offering pumpkin pie. It is definitely offered on Market Wagon this time of year and as well as several of our pies going into the Thanksgiving season. That will be big sellers for us. We also here in our retail stores offer my mom's holiday dressing or stuffing as some people call it. That's an item that we roll out at the holiday, um, is a great seller. So it's not something that everybody loves to make, and it's just, my mom has a great recipe. It's just something we've reproduced and, and have offered to customers. We also offer the Sweet potato praline or Praline Sweet potato casserole. It's a mashed sweet potato with almost like a candied pecan.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Oh, I'm very familiar. Oh, yeah. This is a staple at our farming family get togethers too. My wife hates it. She's, she shouldn't, shouldn't say she hates it. She does remind me that it's a dessert, not a side. And I tell her no, it's definitely a side dish counts as a vegetable . Um, I think things like that are, they come from rural or farming communities and, it's interesting how my wife, I married an urbanite. Okay. She doesn't, she doesn't relate to the same recipe. She's not as,
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
You can't quite not appreciate it .
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
I, well I'm working on it
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
. Well, sweet potatoes is one of those things. Maybe you either like, you love or you do not like, and, but yeah, it, it, it could almost be classified as a dessert. It's very, you know, it's got that sweet crunch on top and it's, it's fabulous people, people love it. So
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
I've often wondered what the difference in the recipe actually is between the filling of a sweet potato pie and a sweet potato casserole. And I'm guessing they're pretty similar
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I'm sure they're, they probably have lots of sugar and butter . And one thing I mentioning that, one thing I will note, obviously I mentioned early on is I grew up on a dairy farm. Here at The Homestead, we use only real butter. That's something that I will not, I will not compromise quality and we don't, we don't use any margarine or anything like that. Everything is real butter. So we definitely try to use quality, quality ingredients to create the best, um, quality that we can.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
So, real cream in that sugar cream pie?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Actually, that recipe doesn't actually call for real cream. It calls for milk, but it gets its richness from a lot of butter.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Okay. So it's milk and butter.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yeah
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Got it. And speaking of pies, are customers able to pre-order their pies for the holidays on Market Wagon?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Absolutely. I believe that we do have some pre-orders. I will have to check on that, but I know that we definitely have them on, um, open and I believe starting this week we have pies available.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Yeah, well, sugar cream pie from The Homestead is gonna be at a Carter dinner coming up in the next couple weeks, if not several
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
. Okay, sounds great.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Jody, does your family back in Kansas still farm dairy?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
My father has retired from the dairy, but my brother, um, farms a lot of acreage out there and dad helps them. So the ag the ag tradition continues.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
That is great to hear because that's a rarity and so I'm really encouraged to hear that.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Yep. It's a good life.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Other than MarketWagon.com, where else can customers find you online? Are you on Facebook, Twitter? Do you have a website?
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
We have a website, HomesteadButtery.com. They can also find us on Instagram, Facebook. We also outsource some of our products. We sell to a few companies. We sell wholesale. Some of our pastries are in all of the Copper Moon coffee shops here in Lafayette. So that's been fun. We sell our scones and sweet rolls and cookies and things like that to all the Copper Moon shops here locally. We sell to a couple of meat markets in outlying towns, and it's amazing how well those products go in these small towns. I think it's just, again, it's another source for something that's quick. They know it's homemade, they know it's got quality ingredients and they can taste the difference.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
So it's become, it's become quite popular in those places as well. It's very humbling to know that something that we have created here in small town Remington has expanded to tables across Indiana. And I don't know that we always realize the impact that that is making on a daily basis, but we have commented to ourselves before, you know, on Thanksgiving Day, how many dinner rolls must be out on people, you know, how many dinner rolls must be, are being served today and that other families are enjoying that, you know, The Homestead's created. It's just such a heartwarming,it's a warm fuzzy feeling to know that you have created something that other families are now enjoying.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
It just strikes me how many, not just how many dinner rolls, but how many times you have enabled a family to sit down around a meal when they might not have otherwise been able to do that. When they may have been rushing out to a restaurant or fast food or takeout or going their different directions. But to have mom, dad, and kids sit down to eat, even if it's in a hurry, I mean, we've got kids in sports, we're rushing out to practice and events and Right. It happens. But, um, to be able to sit down and have a meal together, um, I think is a lost art as a family. And I think that you've empowered people to be able to do that.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Well, I hope so. And it's really a neat feeling to know that, at least our efforts are going toward that cause and it is a crazy world. It's a busy world and we ourselves, we're so on the go. In fact, just this last weekend, our five girls were home and I served breakfast burritos that we had that we make here at The Homestead. And I told Mike, I said, I am really thankful for this place called The Homestead because I can, I could go grab and go. I'm busy, I'm working.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
You're your own client.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
I am, I am. And I, so you know that I do realize how nice it is to have it available.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Jodi Baylor, CEO of the Homestead, thank you so much for sharing your story and just letting us know what life is like for a small Indiana startup entrepreneur like you.
Jody Bahler (The Homestead):
Well, thank you for the opportunity that you've given us to expand our products to that, to the Indy area and down there. Um, and we look forward to continuing to partner with Market Wagon and grow in that way. So appreciate it.
Nick Carter (Host - Market Wagon CEO):
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than a Mile. Be sure to sign up for Market [email protected] or after downloading the Market Wagon app for iOS or Android. Follow us at Market Wagon on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook for stories, recipes, special announcements news, and just digital handshakes from our friendly, friendly farming community. If you enjoyed More than a Mile, please rate the podcast and write a review on iTunes, cast box poder, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Thank you for continuing to support local food.
